From everything I have read, registering a British car in France is to be avoided like Ikea on a rainy Sunday. Only fools rush in. It is a bureaucratic headache in triplicate, liable to end in expensive failure.

We don’t need another car at La Folie, admittedly. But when my dad offers us his old Volvo – unimaginable luxury, after years of driving a 1989 Espace that still smells of dead dog – I find it hard to say no.

Three European banana producers — France, Spain and Portugal — said Friday they would not accept any EU-negotiated agreement that threatened their production.

France produces bananas in its Caribbean territories, Spain in its Canary Islands in the Atlantic and Portugal in the island of Madeira.

Spanish Agriculture Minister Elena Espinosa, her French counterpart Michel Barnier and Portuguese secretary of state for agriculture Luis Meideiro Vieria met in Madrid Friday with representatives of the Association of European Banana Producers.

“Is that it?” asks Serge the mason, with what sounds suspiciously like a groan, after inserting yet another new window in yet another dusty stone wall. “Is everything finished now?”

P&O Ferries said that its crews had worked into the early hours to clear a backlog of around 700 trucks, 300 cars and seven coaches from its main terminal at Calais, in northern France, after the lifting of a blockade by fishermen seeking larger cod quotas.

But even though services from Calais and Dunkirk were back to normal today, the port of Boulogne was still blocked by trawlers, and P&O said it was taking nothing for granted and was sending a ferry to test out Ostende, 50 miles (80km) up the Channel coast from Calais.

Workers are holding three British bosses captive at an adhesives factory in France over plans to close the site.

The executives and a local manager were taken hostage at British firm Scapa on Tuesday night, police said.

European finance director Ian Bushell said unions representing staff carried out the “non-aggressive” action – the latest of several similar incidents.

A truck was blocking the entrance to the plant in Bellegarde sur Valserine in the south east, Mr Bushell added.

The French capital’s hugely popular cycle hire scheme, Velib, rolled outside the city for the first time on Tuesday as the first of 29 suburbs was plugged into the network.

Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris, cut the ribbon on 21 docking stations filled with gleaming new bikes, with the easy-access scheme to be extended to the inner suburbs surrounding the capital by the end of the year.

The Franco-German motor was for decades the driving force behind EU integration, but at this week’s Brussels summit French motors raised fears of protectionism pulling the EU apart.

Just as EU leaders were putting the final touches to their summit conclusions, the news broke that Renault was shifting some car production back to the Paris suburbs from Slovenia, creating 400 jobs.

Hastily, Renault and French officials moved to quell speculation that this could amount to protectionism.

A million civil servants went on strike Thursday and workers marched in France’s second nationwide street protests this year to denounce President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis.

“The crisis is not the fault of the workers,” said one banner at the biggest march in Paris, where police said 85,000 people fronted by union leaders left the central Republique Square headed for Bastille.

Poland and France were at odds Thursday over an EU Commission scheme to grant 600 million euros in aid to six ex-Soviet states, with Paris fearing it would lessen the pot for Mediterranean nations.

The commission has proposed the funding to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine under the European Union’s “Eastern Partnership” project, an initiative by Poland and Sweden to counterbalance the Mediterranean partnership scheme championed last year by France.

Hundreds of thousands of French workers are expected to join the country’s second nationwide strike in two months.

Unions are protesting against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policies. Unemployment has reached two million and is expected to rise further.

Demonstrations are planned in about 200 towns and cities. Schools are to close and public transport faces disruption.

Organisers hope the protest will be bigger than one in January, when more than a million people took part.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is facing a vote of no-confidence over his decision to take France fully back into Nato.
Opposition critics and some among Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party say the move will weaken French independence from the US.

But correspondents say that by making the vote one of confidence, the government is highly unlikely to lose, because the UMP will rally behind him.

The party has a substantial majority in both houses of the French parliament.

France braces for nationwide strikes on Thursday that unions say will touch off huge protests for the second time in two months against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis.

Nearly three-quarters of the French believe the strike called by all of France’s main trade unions is justified, according to a poll released Tuesday.

More than a million people took to the streets on January 29, the biggest protests held since Sarkozy took office in May 2007 on a promise to reform France and raise living standards.

In French the word for friend is copain, which comes from the Latin cum pane (with bread) and is the person with whom you share your bread.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the French invented bread, but it was probably the Egyptians: however, while few people have heard of eesh baladi, nearly everyone knows what a French stick is.

French lawmakers have voted to ban alcohol sales to minors as part of a crackdown on teenage binge drinking but dropped contested plans to ban wine tastings and alcohol ads on the Internet.

Deputies in the National Assembly late Monday approved an amendment to a health ministry bill raising the legal age limit from 16 to 18 for both alcohol and tobacco sales, bringing France in line with most of Europe.

A woman and her son have been arrested in northern France in connection with the theft of hundreds of thousands of euros worth of jewellery across Europe.

Police said they had placed them under formal investigation for the theft of a 5.5-carat diamond ring worth 635,000 euros (£574,000) in Paris in November.

Posing as a wealthy Muslim woman from Qatar and wearing a headscarf, the thief swapped the ring for a replica.

Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel says it will pay a dividend for the first time since it was created in 1986.

The Paris-based firm will pay four euro cents a share after making a net profit of 40m euros (£35.5m; $50m) in 2008.

The dividend came despite reduced passenger traffic after a fire closed the tunnel between Britain and France in September.

Eurotunnel recorded a profit for the first time in 2007 after successfully restructuring its huge debts.

European Union leaders are preparing for an emergency summit this weekend to discuss, amongst other things, protectionism.

The EU’s executive, the European Commission, is increasingly concerned that national rescue packages for the car industry may be protectionist and could lead to the closure of factories in Central and Eastern Europe, with jobs effectively repatriated to the richer West.

Officials in Brussels are currently examining loans offered by the Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, German and British governments.

Two loss-making French banks, Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne, have finalised details of their merger deal, which was announced last October.

The merged group will be France’s second biggest retail bank after Credit Agricole, with 34 million customers.
The new bank will be headed by Francois Perol, currently President Nicolas Sarkozy’s deputy chief of staff, a move that analysts say is controversial.

France’s government is to inject up to 5bn euros ($6.4bn) into the new bank.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have agreed that their countries will work together to revive nuclear power in Italy.

The Italian power company, ENEL, and its French counterpart, EDF, agreed a deal to study the feasibility of building four power stations in Italy.

They would replace those closed in accordance with a referendum held after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
Since then Italy has become the world’s biggest net importer of electricity.

Here in south-west France, car boot sales are spring and summer events: in most communes, autumn and winter heralds the Lotto season – large bingo sessions inside the warmth of the village hall.

But my neighbours tell me I should not think that the local car boot sales are totally forgotten until the new shoots on the vines appear.